THE PRAGMATIST; Moths and Mice: It's You or Them

By BOB TEDESCHI

Published: June 9, 2011

FIFTEEN years ago the crawl space of my previous home became the site of a turf war between skunks and rats. When the stench subsided, huge flies sprang from the rat carcasses and into the house.

It could have been worse. At least we weren't scared for our lives. A friend recently told me that she once pulled open her dishwasher to find an enormous black snake staring at her. She returned the dishwasher door to its closed position and, somehow, remained standing. Later, she and her husband found an identical snake dead in the road in front of their house.

The story put my rat war into perspective, but it also gave me an idea for ending the turf battle in my current home, between myself and mice.

Why not a pet snake?

Before inflicting that idea on my wife, I called on three people with, presumably, more conventional suggestions for mouse combat. I also asked their counsel on how to stop other common food-seeking pests -- moths -- from invading my kitchen every few months.

My advisers were Bob Young, an operations manager for Terminix, the pest control company; Andrew Lopez, owner of the Invisible Gardener, an online organic pest control firm; and Travis Poore, a garden specialist at Home Depot.

Their advice: Neither problem is hard to solve if you react quickly, spend $20 on the right items, and follow the proper steps. If you want to avoid killing anything, you will pay a good-karma premium, but you can still succeed. If you don't act fast, you will need to spend much more on an exterminator.

Or a hungry snake.

Let's start with moths, because they're easier.

Mr. Young said the typical kitchen plays host to two types -- the Indian meal moth and the Mediterranean flour moth -- and they are in your kitchen because you put them there. You buy them at the grocery store, you drive them home, and you deposit them in your cupboards.

They're not moths at this point, but rather moth eggs, carried as stowaways in boxes of pasta, flour and grains. When they reach your cabinets, they hatch and reproduce.

If you want to get rid of many or most of them, regularly pour your pasta, flour, cereals and grains into sealable containers, and throw away the packages that are often the sites of the eggs. There still may be moths, but far fewer than otherwise.

My wife has adopted a different strategy. Since we are either too disorganized or too lazy to systematically transfer our food to sealable containers, we accept the fact that the eggs will hatch. Then we put a pheromone-based trap (I used Safer's Pantry Pest, about $10 for 2) in the pantry. It attracts the moths as soon as they hatch, they die before they can lay more eggs, and we're fine until the next stowaways arrive.

Mice are more complicated.

Once you have discovered mouse droppings, don't rush into warrior mode. Instead, employ a little wishful thinking, and consider the possibility that the droppings may be years old. Decades, even.

Thoroughly clean the area with disinfectant.

Next, during daylight hours, head to the basement and look for cracks of outside light. Imagine, above each crack, a little ''Welcome Mice'' sign. When you are done, check other likely areas in the house for entry cracks, like back doors or, in apartments, common walls.

Then take a really good flashlight (Dorcy's L.E.D. is about $8), and scour the basement as well as the rest of the house for droppings or nests. Clean all the areas you find, again with disinfectant, wait a day or so, and return. If you have led a righteous life the areas will be pristine, and you can skip to the step of sealing the cracks.

If you have atoning to do, like me, you will find more droppings. Perhaps the droppings will be closer to a half-inch long, and you will have to prepare for a rat battle. If they are a quarter-inch or less, though, they are only mice droppings. Count your blessings -- and don't worry about counting the mice.

''You'd go after one just like you'd go after a dozen,'' Mr. Poore said. ''And always assume you have more than you want to have, because they reproduce very quickly.''

If you are not troubled at the idea of killing mice, buy some snap traps (Victor brand, $2 for 2, are common). Set at least one trap in every place you found droppings. Mr. Poore and Mr. Young both prefer peanut butter for bait (Jif 18-ounce jar, about $3), since the smell lingers longer than that of cheese.

Hardware store employees will show you how to set the trap, but it's worth practicing, with two simple rules in mind. Place the bait before you set the trap, and once it's set, handle it from the side that is opposite the bait. Your fingers will thank you.

Set and reset the traps for a few days at least. Sometimes the bait vanishes, because the mouse isn't big enough yet to trigger the trap. Keep feeding it.

If you kill a mouse, dispose of it in a tightly closed plastic bag to keep flies away.

If the baited traps are untouched for a few days and no droppings remain, your work is done. But if the traps are untouched and there are still droppings, then the remaining mice are avoiding or ignoring the bait.